Apple Valley

"The public are sick of voting for tougher sentences and getting the opposite."
www.theguardian.com/law/2025/oct...
To put it mildly, Robert Jenrick is a complete imbecile who does not know what he is talking about:
www.sentencingacademy.org.uk/wp-content/u...

Deloitte will refund Australian government for AI hallucination-filled report Consulting firm quietly admitted to GPT-4o use after fake citations were found in August.

AI Rule #1: Cynical writers use AI.

Also: Who will pay for consulting, when AI can generate something just as default and vacuous for free? Or will consulting firms claim to offer something more personal, human, and special?

arstechnica.com/ai/2025/10/d...

A beautiful piece by Bernhard Nickel.
"Surround yourself with the right people. Stand in solidarity with them. ... Figuring out what to do isn’t something any of us needs to do alone...
Remembering this fact...has been a deep well of hope."

Why This Essay Could Cause the University of Virginia to Shut Down How Linda McMahon’s latest “compact” would do deep and permanent harm to American higher education

newrepublic.com/article/2013...

No Kings As the president escalates his authoritarian power grab, the NO KINGS non-violent movement continues to rise stronger. We are united once again to remind the world: America has No Kings and the power ...

I wanted to share my reasons why I think it is of paramount importance to attend a No King’s protest on October 18, and to make the case to everyone you know to do the same.
a thread...
www.nokings.org

we hit 2 billion posts today! 🥳

Do not give in to despair. Instead, connect with people in your community and find your shared values. Let's dismantle the us vs them mindset. We are all in this together. The future is not yet written! We can make a better tomorrow.

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU.

Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

Wrote about Comer/Mace attempting to doxx and intimidate Wikipedia editors in an effort to force their own viewpoint onto Wikipedia.

Universitätsprofessur für Experimentelle Psychologie (W2-analog) bei Universität Witten/Herdecke Wir suchen: Universitätsprofessur für Experimentelle Psychologie (W2-analog) (Vollzeit) • Alfred-Herrhausen-Straße 50, 58455 Witten, Deutschland

We're looking for an experimental psychologist in Witten. Contact me if you have questions about the job (I'm not on the commission, so can talk freely :-)
uni-wh.softgarden.io/job/59638545...

Questions to ask yourself As GenAl poses to be a revolutionary tool that can change the academic space and beyond, it is important for you to understand why and how you intend to use these new, powerful tools. These are a few questions to consider and note that the answers to these questions will vary for each person. • Is using a GenAl-based tool helping me learn more and think better? • Is using a GenAl-based tool enabling or hindering my mastery of the stated course objectives? • Is the content I generate accurate and verifiable? Is it free of biases that might harm other groups of society? • How will I treat content that might have been generated using a GenAl-based tool? • Is using a GenAl-based tool equitable to my peers in my course? • How can my actions in using a GenAl-based tool lead to the greater good of society? Understand that your usage of GenAl-based tools can give you the means to better not just yourself, but also society as a whole, and there is an ethical responsibility towards doing so.

The University of Michigan is now claiming that students have an ‘ethical responsibility’ to use AI.

The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine and the Compact for Excellence Members of the Trump administration love to say that federal funding is a privilege not a right and therefore something that can be granted or withheld based on changing administrative priorities.

The Trump Administration’s “Compact of Excellence” for Universities is... far from excellent! Indeed, it’s unconstitutional. In this post, let me count the ways.

blog.dividedargument.com/p/the-uncons...

I thought I'd put the administration's proposed "compact" with universities in context, so I wrote the blog post below.

It's especially for journalists covering this story!

Many details about how the compact itself works and why the administration has retreated to this strategy.

GitHub - profandyfield/discovr: discovr package for R to accompany Discovering Statistics Using R and RStudio discovr package for R to accompany Discovering Statistics Using R and RStudio - profandyfield/discovr

While re-writing my R tutorials I removed the Bayes material from individual tutorials, rewrote it, and collected it in its own home. Just pushed the resulting tutorial `discovr_bayes` to github, it's a gentle intro to Bayesian estimation using rstanarm. github.com/profandyfiel...

Trump’s War on Universities Under the new regime, every student becomes a possible enemy.

Trump’s War on Universities
www.persuasion.community/p/trumps-war...

" Signatories commit themselves to revising governance structures as necessary to create such an environment, including but not limited to transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas. Given the importance of academic freedom to the marketplace of ideas, signatories shall adopt a policy protecting academic freedom in classrooms, teaching, research, and scholarship. Such policies also shall recognize that academic freedom is not absolute, and universities shall adopt policies that prevent discriminatory, threatening, harassing, or other behaviors that abridge the rights of other members of the university community. Signatories commit to rigorous, good faith, empirical assessment of a broad spectrum of viewpoints among faculty, students, and staff at all levels and to sharing the results of such assessments with the public; and to seek such a broad spectrum of viewpoints not just in the university as a whole, but within every field, department, school, and teaching unit. "

Would you agree to FORMALLY SURVEY THE IDEOLOGIES OF FACULTY IN EVERY DEPARTMENT OF YOUR COLLEGE, and to "transform or abolish" any that "belittle" "conservative ideas"?

That's what Trump's "Compact for Academic Excellence." demands.

#edusky #academicsky

www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/u...

This IS a stick.

IDK where media headlines calling this a "deal" for "preferential access" to "benefits" are coming from, but that is FALSE. Document directly threatens to crush universities that don't comply by revoking all federal funding, visas, tax benefits...

Universities still MUST refuse.

Image shows the first two printed pages of the paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” by Cecilia Lai and colleagues, published in Nature in 2001 (volume 413, pages 519-523). The abstract reads as follows: Individuals affected with developmental disorders of speech and language have substantial difficulty acquiring expressive and/or receptive language in the absence of any profound sensory or neurological impairment and despite adequate intelligence and opportunity. Although studies of twins consistently indicate that a significant genetic component is involved, most families segregating speech and language deficits show complex patterns of inheritance, and a gene that predisposes individuals to such disorders has not been identified. We have studied a unique three-generation pedigree, KE, in which a severe speech and language disorder is transmitted as an autosomal-dominant monogenic trait. Our previous work mapped the locus responsible, SPCH1, to a 5.6-cM interval of region 7q31 on chromosome 7. We also identified an unrelated individual, CS, in whom speech and language impairment is associated with a chromosomal translocation involving the SPCH1 interval. Here we show that the gene FOXP2, which encodes a putative transcription factor containing a polyglutamine tract and a forkhead DNA-binding domain, is directly disrupted by the translocation breakpoint in CS. In addition, we identify a point mutation in affected members of the KE family that alters an invariant amino-acid residue in the forkhead domain. Our findings suggest that FOXP2 is involved in the developmental process that culminates in speech and language.

Twenty-four years ago today, our paper “A forkhead-domain gene is mutated in a severe speech and language disorder” was published: www.nature.com/articles/350....
A personal thread about the ups & downs of the journey we took to get to that point....1/n
🗣️🧬🧪

No full books on the topic, but there's some articles I can recommend - the same author above also translated an article to ROMchip:
romchip.org/index.php/ro...

And "Video Games and the Global South" is a great free book that has a chapter on Brazil by José Messias: kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/boo...

How Private Equity Oversees the Ethics of Drug Research Many drug trials are vetted by companies with ties to the drugmakers, raising concerns about conflicts of interest and patient safety.

Drug trials are supposed to be overseen by independent watchdogs. But the ethics and safety of many trials are vetted by companies with private-equity backing and corporate ties to drugmakers, posing conflicts of interest, a New York Times investigation found.

My article "Data is not available upon request" was published in Meta-Psychology. Very happy to see this out!
open.lnu.se/index.php/me...

Russia’s parcel bomb terror: how the GRU nearly caused another MH17 in Europe Disguised as cosmetics and sex toys, Russia's parcel bombs could have turned cargo planes into falling fireballs. Investigative journalist Michael Weiss tells Euromaidan Press why Europe is still on…

MH17-style atrocity narrowly averted. @michaeldweiss.bsky.social, who exposed Russia's parcel bomb network, reveals for Euromaidan Press how close Europe came to mass casualties at Leipzig Airport.

‘Thick as Thieves’: Nathan Gill and Nigel Farage’s Putin Problem Far from being distant from the Reform UK Leader, insiders told Byline Times that the former MEP convicted of bribery was one of Farage’s closest aides, while we reveal how Gill worked on the Kremlin’...

🔴NEW🔴

Thread 🧵

@bylinetimes.bsky.social can now reveal that, during the crucial period when convicted Reform leader Nathan Gill was most active, working directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most senior ally in Ukraine, he was also one of Nigel Farage’s closest confidantes 1/12

Timeless: youtu.be/ZRc0by2vZ7k

INSIDE THE CHURCH OF NIGEL FARAGEOLOGY John Sweeney, our Reform UK correspondent, previews his new series reporting on every county council controlled by the party - an organisation that, as its leader proudly claims, welcomes public scrut...

INSIDE THE CHURCH OF NIGEL FARAGEOLOGY

Read this gang from @thenerve_news Reform Correspondent: me!

www.thenerve.news/p/john-sween...

Way past its prime: how did Amazon get so rubbish? Sick of scrolling through junk results, AI-generated ads and links to lookalike products? The author and activist behind the term ‘enshittification’ explains what’s gone wrong with the internet – and ...

This is so good from Cory Doctorow on all the tricks Amazon uses to get both consumers to pay more, and how businesses on the platform end up paying it 45-51 cents on every dollar.

Plus he rightly calls for regulatory change, not just individual consumer action
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Ukraine brings back 22 children from Russian-occupied territories "Today, all the rescued children are safe in Ukraine-controlled territory," Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine's Presidential Office, said.

⚡️ Ukraine brings back 22 children from Russian-occupied territories.

"Today, all the rescued children are safe in Ukraine-controlled territory," Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine's Presidential Office, said.

A statement from the President of the Royal Society | Royal Society A statement from Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, regarding threats to the values that allow science to flourish.

Deeply disappointing. Once again the @royalsociety.org has avoided explaining how *actions* by Elon Musk that clearly repudiate the Society's values are consistent with the code of conduct that Fellows must adhere to. royalsociety.org/news/2025/10...

Post a favorite econ paper: Lichter et al. (2021, JEEA) @sigginho.bsky.social

Regions with higher Stasi spy density in East Germany still show lower trust, lower incomes, higher unemployment, and less entrepreneurship decades after reunification.

Open-access link: doi.org/10.1093/jeea...

Bringing this over here since Twitter is stupid.
Taylor Swift eras as research methods with no explanations: A thread.

Debut: Participant Observation